You fling your hurting soul against old walls
Those peeling walls presume to fling it back
A wood-roach scuttles across your hopeless hopes
Through cigarette-ashes of eternity

The wreckage of the past a pile of books
The bleakness of the now a cheap tv
Unheard in the humming of electric strips
Unholy unpostolic poverty

There is no insulation against tomorrow
But the Poly-Perk blesses your cup of sorrow

We are the F.B.I.; we beat and yell and roar

But it’s okay –

We are not SMERSH pounding upon your door

Someday our mouldering bones will grace the walls
Of a museum’s scientific display
And little Martians will play through the halls
Ignoring us on their school’s field-trip day

Our zygomatic bones in exasperation
Attempt to roll (but, sure, cannot) because
We are extinct, a disappeared nation
Your skull and mine won’t even have jaws

And so the Beothuk on the opposite shelf

Will ask

“Well, European, are you finally over yourself?”

“Whatever Power or powers there might be,
The rules can’t possibly apply to ME.”

Humans to Download Their Souls onto Microchips
                                          So They Can Live Forever

                                                        ­  -Headline

And so all hopes and dreams and fears and loves -
That beautiful girl who kissed you one night
Your after-school job, your first little car
Recruit training, your Navy buddies, the sea

Your wedding day, your children at their play
Your coffee pals at the Old Men’s Café
The songs you wrote, the dreams you dreamed, your - self
Light-beamed and streamed into a little pill

The chip was lost; in someone else’s drive it sits -
He replaced your soul with Elvis’ greatest hits

The Super Wolf Blood Moon Eclipse
Into its orbit quietly slips

Eclipse the Super Wolf Blood Moon
The fork drives away with the spoon

Moon Eclipse The Super Wolf Blood
It trips and falls into the mud

Blood Moon Eclipse The Super Wolf
Growls “Ha!” ‘cause nothing rhymes with “wolf”

Wolf Blood Moon Eclipse The Super
Cleans up the mud with a little scooper

Super Wolf Blood Moon Eclipse The
Shines bravely over my favourite tree -

The moon always gives us such delight
Especially on this frosty night!

And Lord we just wanna

Upon my folk guitar I plang three chords
I place the book of Psalms upon a stand
And I can sort of mix them for the Lord
And twankle-twank clichés throughout the land

And Lord we just wanna

Now with her tambourine comes Sister Jean
To help me score MY song (MY name comes first)
She’ll rhythm that machine to our happenin’ scene
And wrap our Jesus in a tune chain-versed

And Lord we just wanna
And Lord we just wanna
And Lord we just wanna

“And Lord we just wanna” is our sugary tone
But the holy copyright is mine alone

And Lord we just wanna

Two wideawake birds bumped into each other
On the distant island of Ascension
Said one to the other, “Excuse me, dear brother!”
And the other replied, “Don’t mention
                                                         ­                 it.”

Lovers disappoint each other in time
The protestations of eternal love
Those breathless kisses on a summer night -
They leave no lipstick on a shopping list

Lovers disappoint each other in time
The protestations of eternal youth
When even the sell-by dates have faded away
From the shopping lists of our yesterday

We mourn the lips we’ve kissed, the lips we’ve missed

But still…

Would you leave lipstick on my shopping list?

A young mother cradles her broken child
Amid the fragments of her world, her soul.
Blood drips.  Rain-sodden insulation drips.
Stillness between storms.  The trees are all gone.
A dark Sargasso Sea of shattered wood,
Bricks, clothes, books, toys, rags, glass, papers, bodies.
In the gasping heat the rot begins now.
No houses.  No lights.  A helicopter
Floating valley boys with plastic boxes
Taking cruel pictures and O-My-Godding
For the telescreen (between soda ads).
And in fortresses of personal affronts

(Safely far away)

Keyboard commandos leap into inaction:

People who choose to live there deserve it.
We told you that global warming is true.
We didn’t have these things ‘til they kicked Jesus
Out of these here schools. And paddling, by God.
It’s Obama’s fault.  Or is it George Bush?
It’s the Republicans. Public schools. Gaia.
British Petroleum.  Coal.  SUVs.
Suburbs.  Not reading the Bible.  Comets.
You’re stupid. Well eff you back.  Eff you more.

While in the second lowering line of storms
A young mother cradles her broken child.

Saint Francis is depicted in fine art
In great museums and in modest homes -
And you can find him too, down at Wal-Mart,
Between the plastic frogs and concrete gnomes

Chaucer and the Lightendyten 1


“The Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales
Grinds from the photocopying machine
And thus the casual observer, he wails
That technology produces the scene

And yet good Chaucer wrote in the long ago
Rhymed rhythms to instruct and to delight
The copier came later, as you know -
Our pilgrim was the first these tales to write

Or was he?

So here is a problem, which I you begge:
Of which came first, the cicen or the egge?



1 There was of course no Middle English word for “photocopier” so I cobbled one together from “lighte,” to give light, and “endyte,” to write.  Chaucer said it was okay.

These are not tears of sorrow or joy;
These are tears from allergens, m’boy.




(As Tennyson did not say)

Whose breaths these are, oh, yes, I know
And on the laptop they will show
With lines and graphs so all can cheer
Each breath of mine I huff and blow

My little dog must think it queer
To sleep with a machine so near
Sighing all night without a break
Every evening throughout the year

She gives her collar bell a shake
To ask if there is some mistake
The only other sound’s the beep
Of mechanical air intake

Breathing is lovely, counting sheep
And I have life to love and keep
And hours and hours of healing sleep
And hours and hours of healing sleep








All honor to Robert Frost, to the scientists and medicos who invented CPAP and BIPAP machines, to the makers of those little life savers, and to all medical workers.

In the cartoons and in family lore snoring is amusing; in reality snoring indicates a lack of oxygen to the brain and the body’s struggle to make it good.  Snoring = oxygen deprivation, which leads to stroke and / or mental issues, and a too-soon death.

A sleep study involves no needles or indignities, only a night’s sleep with some flat little electrodes taped to one’s chest and extremities. Early in the morning the nice technician will bring you a cup of fresh coffee.  Now that’s my kind of medical care!

“Weaponization” has been weaponized
So that a shutting down may be shut down
By weaponizing a shutdown’s downside -
And let The People shout “Absolutely!”

By weaponizing one’s feelings and whims
There is projected a transparency
That calls for a personal comfort snake -
And let The People shout “Actually!”

So please shut down the shutdown; that’s the tonic -
And let The People shout “Iconic!”


A consideration made after reading Alan Glyn’s thoughtful essay, “Conspiracy Fiction Once Helped Us Tell the Truth. Now It’s a Weapon for Liars,”  in Vulture: https://www.vulture.com/2019/01/can-conspiracy-thrillers-work-under-a-conspiracy-presidency.html.­  

The title is preachy and too long, reflecting the heavy hand of an editor, but the essay is most interesting.

This site does not permit the caesura divisions at all and I will not post the poem without them. You can find "Antihistamine Dreams with a Little Touch of Grendel in the Night" at my own not-very-well constructed site,

https://reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com/2019/01/antihistamine-dreams-with-little-touch.html

where the divisions are merely botched, not forbidden.

(I think it's rather nice, shivery little poem, especially if read around a campfire at night)




“A little touch of Grendel in the night” is a takeoff of “a little touch of Harry in the night” in Henry V.

For Mike Marconett

                                  of happy memory

Bright star, beyond a Sterno stove’s brief glow,
We’ll live forever as we live this night:
Coffee and cigarettes and comradeship,
Our backs against the sun-warmed Sierras
As the cold falls from infinite darkness
To keep the snow in place another night,
To smile in ancient silence back at you,
To make a glowing, slumberous twilight until dawn.
Those C-rations were good after a day
Of scrambling among pre-historic rocks
Made musical by the dinosaur creek,
Water as cold as the dark end of time.
San Diego glows in the south-southwest,
Silently, inefficiently, light lost.
But you, dear, happy star, will still shine down
On dreaming youths, tonight and other nights,
Counting for us, for them, each millennium.

Those who have never bagged corpses
After a night of flarelit horror
Confused, concussed, their souls awash
With blood and smeary shards of flesh

Those who have never smelt the night
Incensed in the obscene stench of death
Where screaming conscripts’ lives were ripped
Are calling for armed revolution

Let us call instead for a cigar
And a quiet evening with Keats

The cleaning lady pushes her cart about
Among administrative whisperings
And teachers sneak out of in-service
For an electronic moment in the head

The cleaning lady pushes her cart about
Computers in their wireless conclave met 1
Exchange that hushed arcana passed through PEIMS 2
And sticky notes – they seem to reproduce

Youth is reduced to a computer printout

And

The cleaning lady pushes her cart about






1 cf. G. K. Chesterton’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard”

2 The Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS) encompasses all data requested and received by TEA about public education, including student demographic and academic performance, personnel, financial, and organizational information. (https://tea.texas.gov/.../DataSubmission/PEIMS/PEIMS-_Overview)

In my boyhood the fields were real indeed:
The winter soil to be awakened and turned
The manure, mulch, and mould lifted and turned
Wise husbandry’s anticipation of spring

My fields are all metaphorical now:
The winter files to be updated and turned
The documentation lifted and turned
Clerkly, accessibly, from A to Z

The files, the plough, to the long seasons fit
Papers or ****, it’s still long rows of (stuff)

A Man and a Woman in the Ticket Line
for the Tudors to Windsors Exhibition at the Museum of Fine Art

“SO LIKE SHE SAID THAT HE SAID THAT SHE SAID
I SAID THAT REDNECKS WERE LIKE THAT YOU KNOW
CAN YOU IMAGINE PEOPLE LIKE THAT HERE
I LIKE TRY TO PERSUADE THEM BUT YOU KNOW

“SO LIKE I SAID THAT AXLE WAS BROKEN
SO LIKE I SAID THAT THE BEST COFFEE IS
SO LIKE I SAID THAT WE LIVED TOGETHER
SO LIKE WE WERE JUST FRIENDS YOU KNOW...”

The man speaks loudly, up and down the hall
The woman, well, she hardly speaks at all

The (beep) painting (beep) dates (beep, beep) from (beep)
Holbein’s (beep) first (beep) visit (beep) to (beep)
England (beep) oil on oak (beep) a (beep) golden
Tudor (beep) rose (beep) over his heart (beep)

The chain of office his aurea catena
Of faith in God and in his king (beep, beep)
Is (beep) the (beep) paper (beep) in (beep) his
Hands (beep) Averil (beep) Manchin’s (beep) petition?

Saint Thomas seems to look so far away –
Perhaps he sees beyond his martyrdom day




Except for the rhyming couplet I’m having a bit of fun here. The Holbein painting of St. Thomas More is beautiful (beep) in every way, and I am grateful for the opportunity to spend some time before it. The Tudors to Windsors: British Royal Portraits from Holbein to Warhol exhibition is brilliant as is everything the Houston Museum of Fine Arts does:  https://www.mfah.org/

Saint Thomas More, ora pro nos

Imagine this centered: And lunch with Kirk and Uncle Bubby

Even the birds are staying home today
Those flocks and flights whose accustomed spirals
Make animate the skies are grounded by frost
And leave the waters of the marsh in peace

Young men uniformed in Nomex 1 and beards
Spiral into Hollier’s Cajun Kitchen
From the barges and the maintenance shops,
Cracking units, pipelines and hotshot rigs

They are smart, tough, and strong; they fuel the world
And pose for pictures with the concrete pig 2


1 Nomex is a flame-resistant material developed by DuPont and is worn by workers in many industries, especially petro-chemicals.  The man or woman in Nomex keeps our cars, our lights, and our lives functioning.

2 There are in fact two concrete pigs outside Hollier’s (pronounced “O-Yays,” says Uncle Bubby).

The Moleskine™© is Chinese now, has been for years
And anyway Hemingway would probably type
Into his electronic personal device:
“Jose was dead. So was his fitness watch.”

Still

There’s rhythm in a pen as in a key
One flows, the other taps, syllables dance
Your thoughts into an opera of life
Performed in a theatre of silent stars

The Moleskine is in your hands now, will be for years
So choreograph your thoughts onto that page

A Field Guide to Awkward Silences
The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings
A Field Guide to Secure Wi-Fi
A Field Guide to Asset Forfeiture
A Field Guide to “Fake News”
A Field Guide to Lies
A Field Guide to Antibiotic Stewardship in Outpatient Settings
A Field Guide to the Italian New Right
A Field Guide to Getting Lost
A Field Guide to Ripple Effects Mapping
A Field Guide to ****** and Fly Fishing
A Field Guide to Jerks at Work
A Field Guide to Bad Faith Arguments

And so it field guides, and so it field guides
As dear old Kurt Vonnegut did not say
And what field is the writer talking about?
About the farmer outstanding in his field?

Alas there is no field guide to writing
A title blessedly free of field guide
Which would be a feel-good fieldless guideless
For which humanity would be grateful

About as original as Keep Calm
Keep Calm and Say Something Original
Let the last field guide be Keep Calm about
A Field Guide to Burying Tired Cliches’

A new calendar is a map of time
Showing you spaces in which you might live
And setting off the seasons and solemnities
The penances and feasts in order just

Beneath pictures of cafes’ in Water Street
Arctic-wind hiking trails in Ikkarumiklua
A pint of Quidi Vidi in The Gut
And Peter Pan’s statue in Bowring Park

Or maybe

Our Lady of Walsingham
Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe
Notre Dame de La Salette

Or some puppies and kittens

               And may you find your heart’s desires this year

Pretend this is centered: Is Taos Burning?

          “…inspired by the pinon nut native to the Southwest.”

                                 - label on a coffee packet

Inspired

Apparently real pinon is not to be had,
Not anymore; the coffee is lesser now
Its taste inspired by a chemistry lab
Although the packet looks the same

Inspired

Instead of coffee flavored with pinon
The bean is only – inspired – and what is that?
It pretends that a chemical is from
The mountain pines of far New Mexico

Inspired

I want to go away to old Taos today
Where they make the best coffee at Michael’s Café

(Imagine the title centered)   Art in Pursuit of Man

        Reaction to a Temper Tantrum in a Fashionable Arts Magazine

Art cannot be but in pursuit of man
Whether or not man is in pursuit of art
For men are shifting shoals of shiftlessness
Artistic absolutes that calendar-clique

But art is not defined, not locked in time
Art does not yield her crown in obedience
To yet another Decree 349
To yet another Order of the Day

Art is herself; her names are Sapientia
And Sophia; she creates; she does not obey

“…and looking at a picture on the opposite wall.”

                          -C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Ikons are windows to another World
Of Theos and Theotokos, of our saints
Some as merry as yet are others stern
While forming from the prayerful writer’s 1 hand

And in the saints the Light of God shines through
True witnesses to that transcendental Truth
And so we pause and with a candle catch
The prayer-light of their eternity

(As does the bedes-spider 2 who lives there)
Ikons are windows to that truer World


1 In Orthodoxy an ikon is said to be written rather than drawn or painted, but y’r ‘umble scrivener is no authority; the reader might begin a study of ikons / icons with:

http://www.pravmir.com/how-to-sep-up-an-icon-corner-at-home/

2 An Orthodox friend discovered that a spider had made its home among his ikons, and so in peace and hierarchical obedience the little creature served God as a sort of canon, or perhaps a bedes-spider, until its death.

This house is silent now, this new smart house
The storm has downed the power lines; wild rains
Against the windows beat like hungry wolves
And all house gadgetry is silent and still

And just as still: the Barnes & Noble Nook™®
The Ipod™® unsupported, the dead FitBit™®
That failed before its third Christmas day
The La Crosse(tm)® that failed before its second

And dead are all the promises that they gave:
Our silent gadgets in this cold, dark cave

Long-fallen stars and quarrelling lords must wait
For seasons upon seasons to pass in flight
Seasons, and Feasts upon a Table set
Untasted by sleepers, and winged away

But, exiles, you may taste of mercy here
And you may taste forever of that Feast
If you are not afraid to hear the silence
Where out of time all healing will be given

If you can trust that which you cannot know -
Long-fallen stars and quarrelling lords will wait


1 C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The human and the tree frog say good night
The human inside and the tree frog out
Sharing a pane of glass but little else
For frogs maintain their standards, don’cha know

And sticky pads and frontal lobes don’t mix
Not in polite reptilian society
Since humans, you know, they’re not really green
Nice enough in their place, of course, but still…

Good frogs dismiss the human as a lazy **** -
For sleeping while all honest creatures work

(ripped from the sages' pages of the Middle Ages – “Sumer is icumen in”)

Merrily he eats the worms
Pull them from the ground!
Their heads pop up
On them he sups
As they squirm around
Chirp, robin!

The squirrels are eating all the seeds
The cardinal’s head’s a-bobbin’
The doves are cooing
The cows are mooing
Chirp merrily, robin!

Robin, robin
How well you chirp
Now eat the worms and burp!

Burp, burp, burp!

“We read in Isaiah: ‘The ox knows its owner,
                  and the *** the master’s crib….’”

                   -Papa Benedict, The Blessings of Christmas

The ox and *** are in the Stable set
In service divine, as good Isaiah writes
A congregation of God’s creatures met
In honor of their King this Night of nights

And there they wait for us, for we are late
Breathless in the narthex of eternity
A star, a road, a town, an inn, a gate
Have led us to this holy liturgy

Long centuries and seasons pass, and yet
The ox and *** are in the Stable set

For our Mothers on Christmas Eve

             For Katherine Mattie Bevil Blanchette Hall, 1922 – 2010
                                         and all our mothers

Beyond all other nights, on this strange Night,
A strangers’ Star, a silent, seeking Star,
Helps set the wreckage of our souls aright:
It leads us to a stable door ajar                                                          

And we are not alone in peeking in:
An ox, an ***, a lamb, some shepherds, too -
Bright Star without; a brighter Light within
We children see the Truth those Wise Men knew

For we are children there in Bethlehem
Soft-shivering in that winter long ago
We watch and listen there, in star-light dim,
In cold Judea, in a soft, soft snow

Leaves fallen are summer’s tabernacle
Upon earth as altar, bearing life within
And life without: children, a protesting squirrel
And that storied grasshopper, unprepared

Neither blanket nor carpet, but a studio
Of life, in which cellular structure frames
The secrets of green chloroplastic life
And graphs the sweet, wind-chorused songs of summer

They fall asleep for a time, to awaken in spring:
Leaves fallen are summer’s tabernacle

The Holy Grail, the Chalice of Our Lord
Borne to Glastonbury, the Isle of Avalon
By the holy man of Arimathea
Then lost, and quested for by noble knights

The Holy Grail is present still, each day
In vessels blessed for sharing Eucharist
Whose Elevation in the Upper Room
Was then, is now, and forever will be

In setting fit, in prayerful accord:
The Holy Grail, the Chalice of Our Lord

The winter solstice is the year withdrawing
From all the busy-ness of being-ness,
And life in all its transfigurations
Seems lost beyond this cold, mist-haunted world

Time almost stops. Low-orbiting, the sun
Drifts dimly, drably through Orion’s realm
Morning becomes deep dusk; there is no noon
Four candles are the guardians of failing light

Until that Night when they too disappear
Beneath a Star, before a greater Light



Lawrence Hall
Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go
Available from amazon.com on Kindle and as bits of dead trees

We have built for ourselves a Faraday cage
And locked ourselves inside; no rays can touch
Our souls codified in magnetic strips
The Good, the True, and the Beautiful in chips

No ray, no beam, no pulse can penetrate
The protection racket of secret codes
(Except when they ****** well can and do)
While we posture behind scientific wires

Passive self-destruction is all the rage

For this

We have built for ourselves a Faraday cage

Expect no pity as you fall and fall
Weighed down by the medals you gave yourselves
Through your closed loops of self-congratulation
In your officers’ clubs and private planes

You led us from the sky and from the rear
Secure in air-conditioned bunkers sealed
Against pollution by heat and dust and rot
And the uncollected bodies of the dead

Expect no pity as you fall and fall
Weighed down by your accumulated wealth
Through your closed loops of self-congratulation
In boardrooms and governments and private planes

You sacrificed us for your resumes -
You’re out of single-malt; now go away

I saw a polar vortex in my dream
Drinking his coffee with sugar and cream
Then water skiing on the warm gulf stream –
He seemed to plan, he seemed to plot, to scheme

I tried to wake, I tried to warn, to scream
But wait – now just what is this wild dream’s theme?
Why was my sleep all night a mental steam?
My dream was confused, for this was the meme:

My gutter ball alienated my team

And so

I saw a bowler vortex in my dream

The one-off bag is by Louis Vouitton
The sheath dress by Dolce & Gabbana
The low-top shoes by Christian Louboutin  
The vaporisation is by Sukhoi

Evening wear goes with biologicals
Retro pantsuits with a casual bomb
Alice Archer jeans for a weekend massacre
Jonathan Simkhai swimwear for an ocean boil

Ohhhhh, yeahhhhhhhh…

She turns every head when she enters the room
But The People’s Army delivers the BOOM

How difficult to rejoice when one hears
That those relatives against whose predations
Dead-bolts have been fitted on every door
Are visiting for Christmas after all

Let us rejoice that the nephews who pick locks
And break the windows in the garden shed
And ride the patio doors off their hinges
And pocket pewter chessmen for their play

Will be with us merrily once more
With their mothers – ‘tis the season to abhor

In a deep summer dusk that seems forever
A twilight of fireflies and magic found
Small children barefoot ‘round the universe
Happily pursued by a mysterious It

Home base is the foot of the old porch steps
Beneath a pantheon of elders wise:
Mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts
And in their Old Gold cigarette incense we

Tumble like puppies on those old porch steps
In a deep summer dusk that is forever

Their revenue stream must be falling bad -
Yet another erectile dysfunction ad

“You Can Tell It’s Mattel It’s Swell" (tm) 1

          -A toymaker’s slogan applied to (That Rifle) in the 1960s

(That Rifle) often fires when it should not
Its chosen function is usually to jam
But, da®n, it’s black and **** and hot -
Blows off testosterone when it goes Bam-Bam

And when it discharges, so does its owner
A little bullet from a little spout                              
With his stud piece, no longer a loner -
True love from each basement dweller and lout

Maybe it makes guys feel all hunky-hunk -
Well, they are welcome to that piece of junk

1 Mattel has never had any connection with the manufacture of weapons

The American Legion meets in the parish hall
Third Tuesday every month (missed you last time)
Old men in funny hats saluting the flag
And then again re-living AIT

Their perimeter shrinks as children rehearse
Their songs and dances for tomorrow night
In honor of Nuestra Senora -
With Juan Diego’s tilma She blesses the Americas

In a classroom across the way the AA
Are fighting their dragons as manfully
As good Saint George, and so in very truth
They are fighting dragons for all of us

This is Our Lady’s cocina, open to all:
Everybody meets in the parish hall

Not much longer now before we and Keats
Must pack up all our impedimenta
Into a photocopier paper box
And after a Wal-Mart-cake reception – leave

No one will notice us, and that’s okay
Thomas and Frost will meet us with the car
Greene will suggest that we go for a drink
The designated driver might be Shakespeare

With Fermor beside him reading the map
Guareschi and Wodehouse laughing in the back
Lewis and Chesterton will bring the beer
And Leonard Cohen will adjust his hat

In God’s name we will sit under the apple trees
And tell merry tales of the lives of kings


          And whether we shall meet again I know not.
          Therefore our everlasting farewell take:
          For ever, and for ever, farewell…
          If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
          If not, why, then, this parting was well made.

                             -Julius Caesar V.1.115-119

I love few things better than a cup of tea
But with that advert – shouldn’t they pay me?